Carl Weese Platinum / Palladium Prints

My friends Carl Weese and his wife Tina are visiting TOP Rural Headquarters from their home in Connecticut. They're out today on a sortie in the direction of Rochester, scouting a drive-in theater for Carl and farm landscapes for Tina's paintings, hoping they have enough time to fit in a visit to George Eastman Museum. I stayed behind to work and mind the dogs.

I got to see a whole lot of Carl's gorgeous platinum/palladium prints last night, and you know it always makes me happy to look at prints. He's now doing Pt/Pd prints from digital internegatives of film originals, from digital negatives of digital originals, and from in-camera film negatives—from Pt/Pd renderings of some very early 35mm work to 7x17" contact prints. Lovely.

Although he has taught the art of platinum printing for many years (and is available for private workshops, by the way, in case you want to learn), he continues to refine and improve his superlative craftsmanship, exploring the nuances and shadings of formulas and papers. Some of his extremely delicate, quiet landscapes and nature photographs almost dissolve in low contrast, collapsing into the middle of the tonal scale, while at the same time managing to render fine detail that almost descends into the microscopic. The effect is both soothing and revelatory, and I got kind of fascinated.

One thing he said last night that I thought I'd pass on was, "If you can print, you can print." Paraphrasing, he said it doesn't really matter if your medium is platinum, conventional silver, or Canson paper in an Epson—the techniques can be mastered; the real skill is having good judgment and knowing what you want the print to look like.

Carl Weese. Photo by Bill Mitchell.

This is on another topic altogether—food—but I learned something else about Carl I thought was interesting. He's a lifelong vegetarian, but only because he doesn't like the taste of meat and never has. Even as a kid, he says, he hated meat and fish of all kinds and went to great lengths to avoid having to eat it—he only wanted the veggies, fruits and starches.

I just thought that was interesting because it seems to me that all the vegetarians and vegans I've known have been motivated at least in part by some mix of humanitarian/ethical concerns, or personal health concerns, or because the efficiency of production (global health concerns?) appeals to them. There's usually some amount of virtuousness in the mix. Carl says he doesn't mind those aspects of it but he can't take any credit for being virtuous in any way. With him it's just what does and doesn't appeal to his tastebuds, and that's it.

I fixed a lentil curry over rice, which cleared the bar and was pretty tasty, to boot.

Mike
(Thanks to Bill)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JG: "I have a couple of Carl's platinum prints from an earlier TOP sale and agree they are gorgeous, both technically and artistically. The inkjet prints of his that I have (and have seen) are quite nice, too. And of course, he's also a nice guy! I had the pleasure of his company for a few days when he stayed with me and my family during his Drive-In Theater roadtrip back in 2012 and he's welcome back any time."

Comments

[Darlene]

I know how Carl feels not liking the taste of meat. This led me to pass the meat on my plate to my siblings under the table growing-up. Not only do I dislike the taste, but I dislike the texture and how it feels between my teeth. When I was married, I cooked traditional meals for my husband and son, and I tried to eat chicken every so often to see if my taste-buds changed, but nope, I ate lots of sauce with bits of chicken. So yes, some of us do not like meat because of its taste and texture besides being an animal lover.

[Michael Roche]

My eldest son now in his mid forties could never eat meat or fish,as a child he would keep meat in his mouth unchewed for long periods and then spit it out. Eventually we just had to accept he was never going to be a meat or fish eater,I suspect there are many more like him.

[Hugh Crawford]

I know several vegatarians who all claim to have become vegetarian after a summer job working at McDonald's

[Tim Bradshaw]

It would be interesting to know what proportion of vegetarians are vegetarian on taste (of food) grounds. I am, and I periodically derive entertainment from letting people rant at me about how I think I'm being so virtuous by being a vegetarian, before pointing out that I also have hunted with hawks (they get to eat the catch, though you can't let them have it all).

[Daniel]

As good a reason as any to be a vegetarian. As for me - I'm a "Top Vegetarian". I only eat animals that eat plants...

[Robert Hudyma]

I have long admired the Platinum/Palladium (Pt/Pd) printing process. In the hands of a skilled printer, like Carl, the images that you can make are most beautiful.

I was most pleased by my purchase of Carl's two prints previously offered by TOP. As I expected, the prints look so much better in person than they look on the web. Last week I purchased a set of Pt portraits that were dated back to the 1890's. They are all beautiful portraits skillfully executed by the photographer and the printer.

Pt/Pd printing is a contact printing process that needs a UV light source. The size of your print is the size of your negative, and in film days there were few Pt/Pd prints larger than 8"x10". All my Pd images have been 4"x5" since thats the largest negative that I could make. In this traditional world you really needed to expose and develop your film negative to match the characteristics of your Pt/Pd hand-coated paper since there were limited manipulations that you could achieve with the coatings and chemistry in the printing process.

Digital printing has been a real-game changer since you can use your computer to make an ideal digital negative from really any image source. What is amazing is that you have two technologies 150 years apart that can achieve outstanding and repeatable results that are not possible with the traditional silver-halide analog negative.

I have not yet tried to make digital negatives and am still using film negatives but I realize that my tools are more limited than if I made digital negatives.

I have found Dick Arentz's book on Platinum and Palladium Printing to be an excellent resource. I had the pleasure of meeting Dick and viewing his prints in Santa Fe and they are outstanding. However, the information on making digital negatives is dated. There is information on how to make digital negatives and some techniques have been published, but everyone seems to have a different technique and this knowledge is tacit rather than explicit.

Time permitting I want to explore the possibilities offered by making these prints using digital negatives. If Carl decides to make a video or publish his digital techniques that would be most welcome, as much as I would like to attend his workshop, my ability to travel these days is limited.

And by the way, I often visit Carl's Working Pictures photography blog, his images are mostly lyrical color images presented in a soft color pallet.

[Joe]

My wife is exactly the same kind of vegetarian! At age 13 she finally stopped trying to like meat, and hasn't eaten any for more than 45 years. In fact, in the beginning, she had never even heard of the term "vegetarian."

[Earl Dunbar]

I went vegetarian about 3-4 years ago. I never objected to the taste (and smell) of meat before, but now it does nothing (or very little) for me. The "common wisdom" is that at some point most vegetarians will revert when, in a weak, protein-deprived moment, they smell bacon. That smell does nothing for me. A burger from really high quality beef is another story, but even that attraction is but a flicker. Steak does nothing for me. Really fresh oysters and well-prepared mussels are another story. Add good champagne to the oysters and ... but even then the ethics win out.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

My exposure (sorry) to platinum / palladium prints historically was disappointing; I found them flat and not very interesting. I don't think it's my tastes changing, I think modern printers are doing better prints, and that's great.